Calling young coders – last few days to apply for EUhackathon

Sean Kelly MEP, the EU’s Industry Committee Rapporteur for Data Protection Regulation, is reaching out to young coders in Ireland to enter the popular EUhackathon 2013 competition.

The 2013 edition of the EUhackathon – ‘Hack4YourRights’ – will take place from 24-25 September in Brussels, Belgium. The theme this year is privacy, and more specifically visualising government access to citizens’ private communications online.

The EUhackathon participants will create visualisations, using data sets from network analysis, corporate transparency reports and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, that shed a light on the state of play of government surveillance in various countries, empowering citizens to stand up for their fundamental rights.

Recent events have drawn attention to the need for greater transparency and awareness to ensure government surveillance is only used when necessary and proportionate.

The good news is that selected applicants will have their travel and accommodation costs covered and the winner or winning team in each track will be awarded €5,000, courtesy of the event sponsors.

Kelly is calling for young Irish coders to apply, but they need to get their skates on. Online applications close this Monday, 15 July, at 11am.

Ann O’Dea is CEO and co-founder of Silicon Republic, Europe’s leading technology and innovation news service, reporting online since 2001. Ann is the driving force behind Silicon Republic’s Women Invent campaign, launched on International Women’s Day 2013, to champion remarkable women role models in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), and to help tackle the gender gap in the knowledge industries She is the founder of Inspirefest, a unique new international sci-tech event, which is grabbing headlines for disrupting the traditionally ‘male and pale’ tech conference calendar.
Ann was awarded a fellowship in May 2015 from the Irish Computer Society for her work in championing women in STEM. Ann received a Net Visionary award from the Irish Internet Association in 2015 for her work on ensuring the visibility of remarkable women role models in her industry, and was named ‘Media Woman of the Year’ at the Irish Tatler Women of the Year Awards 2014. In 2015, she was the first woman to be inducted into the Irish Internet Association’s Hall of Fame.
Ann sits on the advisory board of the Digital Youth Council, and the Royal Irish Academy’s Physical, Chemical and Mathematical Sciences Committee. She is a regular speaker and moderator at tech and STEM events.

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